Welcome to day 3 of the Resolution Challenge! In Day 1 you set your priorities and motivation for your big goal this year, and in Day 2 you made it go from a mere wish to something that’s tangible and actionable. Today you are going to make a plan on how you are going to get from where you are today to where you want to be. This isn’t much different from planning a research project or tackling an engineering problem.
And that means today we are defining components of your goal.
To do this, you’re going to need to take a look at where you are today in relation to your goal so you can plan out the steps to get there. So, let’s take an honest assessment of where you are now. Be honest without being negative. For example, my goal is to “lose 70 pounds”, and my reasons are varied. I could go into a bunch of negative body image comments about myself, but that would just discourage me. Instead, I simply said, “I weigh 230 lbs, and I need to get to 150 to feel healthy and join the Guard. That means I need to lose 70 lbs.” It’s a fact without bashing. All you’re doing here is tracking the target so you can actually hit it.
Now, if you have a goal of something a little less numerically based, such as “become a better writer”, you’ll have to sit down and figure out where your strengths and weaknesses are with regard to writing. Organisation on your list? Take a look at your habits and systems. Keeping up with literature? Again, take a look at your systems. If the area you need to look at isn’t obvious right away, say so in the comments and we’ll help you discover it. After all, this is a team effort, and the Alt Path community you’re support group.
Write down those strengths and weaknesses so you can devise a plan to work with your strengths to shore up your weaknesses. Write down the components you need to make your goal happen. We’re going to use organisation as an example.
Organisation is simply having a place to put everything. So, the components you may need are:
- Organisation bins
- A method to your madness so you can find things
- Patience
- A system
- A cheerleader/expert
- Discipline
Your exact components will depend on what your strengths and weakness are. If you are highly creative, you can likely take a stop at the Dollar Store, find everything you want, and create a masterpiece that would make Martha Stewart jealous. Or, if you are scatter-brained and don’t even really see the mess for more than a blip on your cognitive radar, you’ll likely need an expert to step in on your behalf, then follow-up with discipline and habit building.
By the way, if you ARE organising yourself this year, check out I Heart Planners and Get Buttoned Up for some excellent free resources and ideas. They aren’t all that girly, so they will appeal to the guys here too. I Heart Planners also has some great ideas for organising schedules, day books, and all that pesky paperwork we love to hate.
Identifying the components often takes a while, so we’re going to stop here in the process and pick back up with strategies tomorrow. If you need help with this step, just ask in the comments. We’ll all throw our brains together to come up with a few ideas. Until then, your checklist:
